


The way he Sounds

by PoorUnfortunateSoul



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: ASMR, Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Asexual Character, Asexual Keith (Voltron), Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Established Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Established Hunk/Shay (Voltron), F/F, F/M, Fluff, Insecure Lance (Voltron), Lance (Voltron) is a Mess, M/M, Mutual Pining, Oblivious Keith (Voltron), Slow Burn, Social Anxiety, YouTube, YouTuber Keith (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-07-20 14:58:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16139657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoorUnfortunateSoul/pseuds/PoorUnfortunateSoul
Summary: “You should talk to him after class,” Hunk offers, and Lance looks at him like he’s grown a second head.“And tell him what, exactly? ‘Hi! You don’t know me, but I fall asleep to the sound of your lovely voice everyday, please go out with me?’ In what world does that sound like a good idea?” Lance hisses, getting as close to Hunk as possible so Keith can’t hear them.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) is an experience characterized by a static-like or tingling sensation on the skin that typically begins on the scalp and moves down the back of the neck and upper spine.

Lance has never done well with silence. Having come from a large family, loud is all he knows. The only time the house was quiet was when something was horribly, horribly wrong. 

The first time the house was completely quiet, was because his grandmother had died. Lance remembers that cold dread that had settled in his stomach when he realized that she’d never see him graduate from middle school. She’d been in poor health for a while, but had claimed that was she going to see him graduate at least. It still feels like an elephant has sat on his chest when he thinks about it.

The second, had been when his oldest sister had had a miscarriage. She’d never screamed or wailed, she just… remained silent. He’d never heard her stay quiet for more than ten minutes before. 

Silence doesn’t sit well in his life. Silence makes his stomach twist itself into knots. 

The loud noises of the dorms had been a blessing when he first moved in. It reminded him of home, and when he got homesick the first week he could pretend his neighbor next door was his sister, and not a tiny IT major with sharp wit named Katie, and her hot roommate Nyma. Lance could almost make himself believe it, too, because his high school best friend lives across the hall instead of across the street. 

He dragged Hunk to all of the freshmen rush week stuff, much to his dismay. Hunk’s always been a social person, but running around the college campus all week hadn’t  _ exactly _ given either of them the time they needed to put their rooms together. 

Everything settled after that first week. People stopped leaving their doors open, and focus shifted from making friends to their studies. Monday through Thursday barely heard so much as a peep from anyone past nine o’clock, but everyone on the floor is a freshman experiencing life without their parents reign for the first time. 

Parties happened on the weekends, and, even though he’s one of the unlucky few to actually have a class on Friday, Lance is most at ease then. Everything becomes much more lively, and his anxiety lessens enough to let him sleep. He runs on the energy he harbors from sleeping in on the weekends.

Hunk notices eventually; they’ve been friends for too long for him not to. 

“You’re not sleeping,” he’d stated, frowning at the bags under Lance’s eyes. 

Lance hadn’t tried to fight it, and just shrugged a little helplessly. It wasn’t like he hadn’t been trying. It’s just very hard to sleep when your brain is trying to convince you that something is  _ wrong  _ but it can’t pinpoint what. 

“I have an idea,” Hunk had declared, “but it might be a little weird.”

“Weird-shmired,” Lance had said, “I would do just about anything for a good night’s sleep at this point.” 

That’s how he’d ended up staring at Hunk’s ceiling with wide-eyes, wondering how the  _ hell  _ audio could make him feel like he’s actually getting his haircut. Tingles had run down his spine, making his entire body curl up in response. It hadn’t been  _ bad _ , but it hadn’t been sexual either, which had really confused him. It had felt  _ good _ , but he hadn’t thought that he could get off on it, either. 

“What the  _ fuck _ is that?” Lance had asked, eyes still wide.    
“ASMR,” Hunk had said, grinning smugly. “My mom just recently started telling her clients about it. Supposedly, it can work really well for people with anxiety.”

And work it had. Lance watches an ASMR video to fall asleep for the next week, and can’t remember the last time he felt so well-rested. His favorite videos to fall asleep to are the ear cleaning videos. They never fail to give him ‘tingles’. 

He even has a favorite ASMRtist now. Lance had first come across Keith, or HalfBllloodASMR, on a particularly bad day. 

He was pretty sure he’d flubbed his first speech for his oral communication class. Many people wouldn’t believe him since he comes across as such an extroverted person, especially with his love of sound and all, but talking in front of people is still  _ hard _ . Half his class is a bunch of theater kids that are too wrapped up in the off-stage drama of their department to pay attention to him, and the other half was anxious about their own presentation, but it’d still gotten to him. His professor had said she’d let a few ‘um’s go, but he’s pretty sure stuttering and almost having a full blown panic attack just because he had to talk about his favorite TV show to a room full of strangers isn’t exactly A material. 

HalfBllloodASMR has a video for calming people down during anxiety attacks, and it  _ works.  _ Lance hasn’t come back from the edge of a panic attack so cleanly since he was in therapy still. 

HalfBllloodASMR has quickly become his favorite part of the day. Keith is a bored college student, whose videos normally consistent of him talking about his day, while making various noises like tapping or brushing hair. He does role-plays occasionally, and Lance has watched his ear cleaning one about a million times. 

He’d had 362 subscribers when Lance had subbed, and quickly grew to 30  _ thousand _ in the span of two months. Lance kind of feels like a proud, but not surprised, mother. Aside from being good at what he does, his voice itself is probably the most relaxing thing Lance has ever heard, but he’s incredibly attractive as well. 

It’s his eyes that does Lance in the most, if he’s honest. Yeah, his pale skin is clear and makes it easy to see when he blushes, and his medium length black hair frames his almost petite looking face  _ perfectly _ , but Lance is pretty sure he’s never seen eyes like that before. Keith gets asked all the time if he’s wearing contacts, but denies it each time. 

Lance doesn’t know if it’s the camera or what, but they almost appear to be violet in his videos. They're beautiful, and always honest and open and they make the videos where he pretends to be your friend seem very genuine. They also look slightly freaked out when Lance can’t stop staring at him in his General Psychology class. 

Hunk elbows him, and he looks away finally. 

  
“Dude, that new transfer…. Is that dark and mysterious ASMR guy?”

Lance nods, mouth dry. 

“You should talk to him after class,” Hunk offers, and Lance looks at him like he’s grown a second head. 

  
“And tell him what, exactly? ‘Hi! You don’t know me, but I fall asleep to the sound of your lovely voice everyday, please go out with me?’ In what world does that sound like a good idea?” Lance hisses, getting as close to Hunk as possible so Keith can’t hear them. 

Hunk isn’t taking such precautionary measures, because the kid is sitting ten rows ahead and diagonal of them. 

“I never said you had to ask him out,” Hunk says, rolling his eyes. “I just said  _ talk _ to him.” 

“Talk. Right,” Lance says, “I’ll do that.”

Spoiler alert: he does not do that. Instead, as soon as their professor dismisses them, he’s out of his seat and out of the door. He skips his and Hunk’s usual meet-up with Pidge (a nickname that Katie had been hoping to rid herself of, but had to watch that dream shatter before her very eyes when her older brother, Matt, had come to check in to see how she was adapting to college life and told everyone the story) and books it for the dorms. 

He’s incredibly grateful that he convinced his parents to push for a single room rather than having a roommate, because he doesn’t really think he could explain to a stranger the amount of anxiety talking to someone new gives him.  _ Especially  _ someone he’s been internet crushing on. 

He sits on his bed almost robotically, and lets the last hours events sink in. The boy he’s been obsessed with online is  _ here, _ going to his  _ college _ and in his  _ class. _

_ What kind of bullshit game is life making me play,  _ he questions, flopping back onto his bed. 

“I’m not playing it, and you can’t make me,” he says outloud, to no one. 

Another perk of rooming alone, he supposes; he can talk to himself all he wants. And, right now, he needs to talk to himself about how he’s going to go about avoiding Keith for the rest of his time on campus.

Lance rushes from his classes with his two friends everyday, and has never even been bothered by anyone else. Surely, Keith will just be another student trying to get to class and back with as little of social interaction as possible, so it can’t be that hard to avoid him, right?


	2. Spiraling

Watching videos of someone whispering in your ear to make you feel good is a lot fucking weirder when you’ve had the person stand in front of you. Logically, Lance knows that Keith is  _ aware  _ that people are watching his videos. He hit a 50K subscriber milestone his first month after transfering here, and Lance has heard tiny bits of conversations between Keith and someone that’s recognized him. Lance isn’t even the only person to be watching his videos on this  _ campus _ let alone the world, but it still feels  _ weird. _

Especially since Lance is pretty sure he’s caught Keith talking about him. Call him crazy, but he’s pretty sure that by “weird Cuban kid in the back of the class that won’t stop looking at him but ducks behind a wall when they cross paths in the cafeteria or laundry room” he means Lance. Honestly, he’s just surprised that Keith was able to pin down his ethnicity. Most people guess Mexican. 

So, Lance is known as the weird Cuban kid online now. Opinions of him seem to vary - some think he’s just a shy fan, while the majority seem to think that he’s a weird, stalker, super-fan. He can’t tell what Keith thinks, since he seems to entertain both sides, and Lance doesn’t know what to make of it. 

He tries to stare less in class but it’s  _ hard _ . Lance has never seen someone he’s admired online in the flesh before. He brain can’t seem to process that it’s really happening, and won’t let him look away. 

Hunk tries to help him come off less creepy. He sits in the weirdest angles to make it look like Lance has his eyes locked on him while they talk, but he’s still obvious. So, so obvious. 

So obvious in fact, that when Keith makes friends with Lance’s neighbor, Katie, she calls him ‘weird stalker kid’ when she sees him in the halls. Hunk doesn’t even attempt to act as a buffer then, and Lance can’t even be mad. 

“‘Sup, stalker?” Katie says.

She’s sitting outside of her dorm room with her laptop in her lap. She pushes her glasses up and looks up at Lance. Something about her gaze always makes him feel like he’s Katie’s prey. 

“Laundry,” Lance says, gesturing to the hamper he has behind him. 

Katie leans over to see around him, and makes a small noise.

“Does that thing have wheels?” she asks.

Lance grins wickedly and pushes it in front of himself proudly. He gets told how jealous someone is of his hamper with wheels every time all four elevators go out, which happens more than it probably should. Katie makes an impressed face, and mumbles under her breath about needing to find one for herself. 

“Why are you sitting outside of your room?” Lance asks. 

It’s Friday and, while some unlucky people like Lance still have class today, most people don’t. The halls are loud with music and laughing eighteen to twenty somethings. Whatever Katie’s doing would probably be easier for her to do in her room. 

Katie rolls her eyes.   
“Nyma sexiled me. _Again._ ” 

“Sex-what?” Lance asks.

Katie bangs her head back against her dorm’s door. She looks at him like he’s grown a second head. 

“You’ve  _ never _ heard the term sexiled before?” she asks. Lance shrugs. “You’re so fucking lucky you have a dorm to yourself. Okay, sexiled is when you get exiled from your own room because your roommate is fucking someone.”

Lance makes an ‘o’ with his mouth, and Katie seems satisfied. 

“I didn’t think she was seeing someone.”

Katie’s expression turns mischievous, and Lance knows that he’s said the wrong thing. He doesn’t know Katie well, but he knows she feels all too comfortable poking fun at people the second she feels comfortable with them. Maybe it’s normal, but Lance doesn’t know; it takes him forever to feel comfortable with someone new. 

“What are you so upset about? Thought you had a thing for Keith-y boy,” Katie teases, and Lance groans.

“Look, I’m not  _ stalking  _ him. In fact, I try very hard to not be in the same room with him.” 

“Mm, but wouldn’t you have to know where he is to avoid him?”

Lance sputters for a moment, and Katie’s grin turns cat-like. 

“I’m  _ leaving _ now,” Lance declares, carefully stepping around her.

Katie cackles behind him as he walks down the hall.

“Hey, tell Jackson to turn his shitty music down when you get to his room.”

“Welcome to the Black Parade is a  _ masterpiece _ , Katie Holt,” Lance yells down the hall.

He hears Katie groan behind him, “Not you too!”

Lance chuckles himself as he pushes open the glass door to the elevators. He struggles a bit to get his hamper over the small bump in the floor, and cringes at the loud bang that the stupid doors always make when they close. 

The water fountains spread around campus have a small place to slide a water bottle in to fill it, and Lance hates going to get some in the early mornings or late nights. The doors slamming closed behind him could wake up the whole floor. 

Lance presses the button for the elevator, and leans against the small strip of wall in between them, preparing for his wait. Rooming by himself means that his options for living spaces were limited, and he ended up on the nineteenth floor. 

He, Katie, and Hunk are the only freshman on a floor above eight. Hunk ended up here because of the same reason as Lance, but Katie is a mystery. The building was Hell to live in the first two months. Nothing like living on the nineteenth floor of a building with no air conditioning when it’s 90 something degrees outside. 

Now the biggest inconvenience is the elevators. He has to leave at ten-thirty for his noon class on Tuesday and Thursday because the elevator ride is so damn long.

The elevator arrives eventually, and Lance slips on. There’s only one girl that lives on the twentieth floor on, with her purple hair tied up and her eyes glued to her phone. She jerks her chin to acknowledge Lance, and pops her gum. Lance gives an awkward smile back, presses the button for floor seven, and slides into the corner to wait. 

It takes twenty minutes for the elevator to reach the seventh floor, and Lance gives an awkward head jerk to purple girl who’s still on the elevator. She doesn’t see it, but some sleepy looking guy who got on from the eighth floor sees it, and raises an eyebrow at him. 

Lance feels his cheeks heat up, and his heart jackhammers in embarrassment. He hurries off of the elevator, already feeling himself spiraling. 

Embarrassment is an everyday part of life. His old psychologist had him repeat that like a mantra when he first started seeing him for his anxiety. For most people, embarrassment is something that just happens. It sticks with them for a few minutes, and maybe stows away to bother them one night when they can’t sleep. 

Embarrassment for Lance, feels like the end of the world. That guy probably thinks he’s the weirdest person alive, and he’ll tell his friends about the weird guy on the elevator that nodded at him like he knew him. It’ll be Lance’s new nickname - the weird kid on the elevator that acts like everyone knows him.

Lance has does an amazing job of giving himself a college reputation. First he’s the weird Cuban stalker kid, and then he’s the kid with his head so far up his ass that he assumes that everyone knows him and wants to be his friend. Great. 

“You alright?” someone asks, and Lance nearly jumps out of his skin. He glances over to see none other than Keith looking at him with concern. “You put your whites in with some of your darks, which I’m assuming was an accident since you took the time to seperate them.” 

Lance glances at the machine that he apparently took in his spiraling haze, and finds out that Keith’s right. He blushes again, and reaches in to dig out the colored clothes. 

“Thanks,” Lance mutters, opening the machine next to it and tossing the clothes in. 

“No problem,” Keith says, shrugging. “Seriously though, are you okay? You came in and just started tossing your clothes in like some sort of robot or something.” 

He believes it. Lance is known to look like he’s among the undead when he’s spiraling. He still goes through the motions of everyday life, but his mind is stuck on a self-loathing trip.

“Oh, uh, yeah,” Lance lies. His palms are still sweaty, and his stomach hasn’t settled. Honestly he’s surprised that he didn’t just walk in here and hurl all over Keith’s shoes. Small victories. “Just, uh. Embarrassed myself on the elevator.” 

 Keith hums as Lance closes the machine door. He sits on the floor, and tries to find a comfortable position for his thirty minute wait. Keith’s sitting on a machine that isn’t running, kicking his legs back and forth while he waits. 

Lance remembers him ranting about being on the shorter side but not  _ short _ during one of his videos. He’s definitely short, and it’s  _ definitely _ adorable. Lance can feel his cheeks burning again. 

“What’d you do?” Keith asks, looking away from his phone and at 

Lance with a lazy smile. 

“What?” Lance asks, startled from his thoughts. 

“What’d you do to embarrass yourself?” Keith asks. “You don’t have to tell me, obviously. It’s just, I’ve been here for forty minutes. The first machine I put my stuff in fills but doesn’t actually move, so my clothes just got  _ wet  _ and not  _ clean. _ I still have twenty minutes before I can put them in the dryer.” 

Lance glances at his watch. It’s 11:43. He likes to do his laundry late, because no one else is usually in here. 

“So much for getting back before midnight, huh?” Lance asks, and Keith snorts.

“Pretty sure that ship sailed before the mishap. I’m probably looking at being done around one.”

Lance tsks sympathetically. 

“I meant to nod to this girl, because she nodded at me when I got on, but she didn’t see me. Dude beside her did, though.”

Keith laughs.

“Really?  _ That’s  _ it? Man, the way you were acting, I thought you farted in front of a full elevator.”

“Oh, God,” Lance shudders, and Keith laughs harder. 

Lance can feel his heart rate spike just thinking about that. He’s going to have a new ‘worst case scenario’ fantasy every time he gets on the elevator now. Great. 

“If it makes you feel any better, I waved down someone the other day for a good two minutes thinking they were someone else. Followed the poor guy into the bathroom, wondering why the Hell he ignored me.”

Lance’s eyes bug out of his head. Keith is grinning, completely unashamed, as if he didn’t just admit to living through one of Lance’s worst nightmares. 

“Saw him again a few months later and tried to apologize, but he didn’t remember who I was. What I’m saying is, don’t worry about elevator guy. He probably forgot you as soon as you left the elevator.”

It’s a stretch. A huge one, and Lance knows that, because of course the only time he can think logically is when it works against him. Still, hearing it from Keith, who’s smiling and seems sure of what he’s just said, makes Lance feel better. 

Lance smiles at him, and Keith returns it before looking back down at his phone. 

 

**\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------** **  
** **I Figured Out the Cuban Kid (ASMR Ear to Ear Whisper)**

 

“You all had your theories,” Keith speaks softly into his mic. “Some good ones, and some really  _ wild _ ones.” 

Comments from a few of his videos flash across the screen. All of them are theories about Lance, and why he’s as weird and stalkeriish as he is. 

“I don’t think he’s a weird stalker,” Keith says, rolling his eyes like it’s obvious. “I think he just acts weird around other people because he has anxiety. I talked to him in the laundry room tonight. He came in, real freaked out because someone saw him say hi to someone else that ignored him. Just stared off into space and tossed his laundry in, completely lost in his head. So, yeah, I think that’s it. Just an overly anxious college kid.”

Keith shrugs, as it to say ‘oh, well.’ 

“I know you guys wanted it to be more, and maybe I did too just to satisfy that, but, considering it was  _ my safety  _ on the line, I’m also glad. Alright, let’s get into the actual ASMR part, yeah?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yikes, it's been a while. Sorry about that - I signed up for a sheith & a klance secret santa exchange, and a sheith prompt bang & they've been taking up most of my time. 
> 
> The original plan was to get all the chaptered fic ideas I had out and done before the series was over and the fandom moved on & stopped caring but uhhhhh that didn't happen because I had a seasonal part-time job and college. I don't have the time to write that I used to have at fifteen as I do at twenty, so here's to hoping the hype lasts long enough for me to get these finished and they don't end up like all the Haikyuu fics I tried writing and then never finished and have just left sitting there for a year. 
> 
> ANYWAYS it was kinda cool to see that someone had even guessed the video Hunk showed Lance before seeing it. I was worried that ASMR is such a meme that no one would take this fic seriously and I'd just look like an idiot for writing it in a serious manner (can you tell which character I'm deflecting on lmao) but ASMR actually helped me A LOT when my anxiety was at it's worst my senior year of high school, so it's been pretty cool to see people who enjoy it too reading this! 
> 
> Come talk to me on [Tumblr!](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/festive-keith)

**Author's Note:**

> Someone with social anxiety disorder who regularly makes ASMR videos & uses them to cope with their anxiety writing a story about ASMR. How much more meta can I get?
> 
> [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA) is the video Hunk first showed Lance, in case anyone cares. 
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> [My Tumblr.](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/pastel-emo-keith98) (Fair warning, I'm a multi-shipper. You won't see Shidge or anything like that, but I do reblog a fair amount of Sheith and Hance along with Klance.)


End file.
